The present invention relates to obtaining information about a party placing a call through the telephone system. More specifically, the present invention relates to obtaining location data about a calling party at the called device.
Caller ID services are provided by telephone companies to permit a called party to determine who is calling even before answering the call. Caller ID services generally provide a display of the calling party""s name and/or telephone number. Called parties may use the caller ID service to screen calls and/or to review the names and numbers for missed calls. Thus, caller ID has become a valuable feature of telephone service.
Often, it is also desirable for the location of a caller to be known by the called party. This is especially true in emergency situations. For this reason, automatic location identification (ALI) has been instituted for 911 service so that a calling party""s location is provided to the 911 service being called. This enables the 911 service to dispatch assistance to the calling party""s location without relying on the calling party to verbally provide the location information. However, the ALI database is accessible only by public safety answering points for 911 services and is inaccessible for non-911 telephone calls.
Other called parties may also benefit from knowing the calling party""s location without relying on verbal communication. For example, a poison control center may be called, rather than 911, by a parent in response to a child ingesting a harmful substance. The situation may warrant dispatching emergency personnel to assist the child, but the location of the child must be learned by the poison control center before emergency personnel can be dispatched.
Therefore, there is a need for a system that obtains location data of a calling party for display to a called party for non-911 telephone calls.
Embodiments of the present invention address the problems discussed above and others by providing a system that functions independently from the 911 ALI service to provide location data of calling parties to called parties. The system provides the location of the device used by the calling party to the device used by the called party by providing the called device with automatic access to one or more electronic databases containing location data for the calling parties. This allows the called party to obtain the calling party""s location without relying upon verbal communication. Embodiments of the present invention may be implemented through an advanced intelligent network (AIN) capable of transferring an identifier of the calling party to the called party, where the called device uses the identifier to find the location data.
To provide the identifier to the called party, a signal switching point (SSP) for the called party receives a call trigger that includes an identifier of the calling party, such as the calling party""s telephone number. The SSP forwards the identifier to the called device. In response to receiving the identifier, the called device generates a query containing the identifier, which is sent to an electronic database, such as a local or web server database, a mapping system or other geographic informational system, or other database containing the location data. The electronic database looks-up the identifier to obtain the location data and forwards it back to the called device for display. The called party learns the location of the calling party from the display of the location data.
The SSP for the called party may provide the name of the calling party to the called party, rather than a raw identifier such as a telephone number, so that the device can use the name to find the location data. In this case, the SSP generates a query containing the calling party""s identifier and delivers it to a signal transfer point (STP). The STP then forwards the query to an appropriate signal control point (SCP). The appropriate SCP has access to a database containing name information for the calling party, which is indexed by the calling party""s identifier. For example, the database may be the conventional CNAM database that contains caller ID data. Once the SCP has found the calling party""s name in the database, the SCP delivers the name data to the STP which forwards the name data to the SSP. The SSP sends the name data to the called party""s device.
When the called device receives the identifier, either as a telephone number or name of the calling party, the called device may additionally detect an appropriate database to query based upon the identifier. The identifier may indicate a calling party who falls into a particular category, and the called device may then query the electronic database that contains location data for calling parties of that category, for example family members as opposed to business contacts.
The various aspects of the present invention may be more clearly understood and appreciated from a review of the following detailed description of the disclosed embodiments and by reference to the drawings and claims.